Here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pretense of any
kind. He has been in courts so long as to have conceived a furious
disgust at appearances; he will indulge himself with a little cursing
and swearing; he will talk with sailors and gypsies, use flash and
street ballads; he has stayed indoors till he is deadly sick; he will
to the open air, though it rain bullets. He has seen too much of
gentlemen of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals; and is so
nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks, the more barbarous man
is, the better he is. He likes his saddle. You may read theology, and
grammar, and metaphysics elsewhere. Whatever you get here, shall smack
of the earth and of real life, sweet, or smart, or stinging. He makes
no hesitation to entertain you with the records of his disease; and
his journey to Italy is quite full of that matter. He took and kept
this position of equilibrium. Over his name, he drew an emblematic
pair of scales, and wrote, _Que sais-je?_ under it. As I look at
his effigy opposite the title-page, I seem to hear him say, "You may
play old Poz, if you will; you may rail and exaggerate,--I stand here
for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches, and revenues,
and personal reputations of Europe, overstate the dry fact, as I see
it; I will rather mumble and prose about what I certainly know,--my
house and barns; my father, my wife, and my tenants; my old lean bald
pate; my knives and forks; what meats I eat, and what drinks I prefer;
and a hundred straws just as ridiculous,--than I will write, with a
fine crow-quill, a fine romance. I like gray days, and autumn and
winter weather. I am gray and autumnal myself, and think an undress,
and old shoes that do not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not
constrain me, and plain topics where I do not need to strain myself
and pump my brains, the most suitable. Our condition as men is risky
and ticklish enough. One cannot be sure of himself and his fortune an
hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight.